


Strangled by Your Memory

by Raegaryen



Category: A Song of Ice and Fire & Related Fandoms, A Song of Ice and Fire - George R. R. Martin, Game of Thrones (TV)
Genre: Angst, Child Death, Dany's head is not a nice place to be rn, Emotional Hurt, Episode s08e05 The Bells, F/M, Grief/Mourning, Or Healthy, PLEASE UNDERSTAND I am purposefully making her an unreliable narrator, POV Daenerys Targaryen, Reflection, Trauma, and does not have a safe or healthy outlet to cope with her grief, and is also not entirely sane, and so her response is not safe, but not really, if death and loss trigger you please be careful, just mentioned jonerys, not jonerys centric, she is going through a LOT obvi, she is not thinking of things rationally in this, sort of mad Dany
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-08-12
Updated: 2020-08-12
Packaged: 2021-03-06 00:21:44
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,468
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/25854283
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Raegaryen/pseuds/Raegaryen
Summary: Jon. Every thought of him chilled her. Once, thinking of him felt like sitting in the shade of a lemon tree and a young Viserys, before the madness and the hate took him, braiding flowers into dainty crowns on their heads. Like imagining shapes in clouds and laughing in soft grass. Like peace. Like the only home she’d ever known and thought she’d never have again.But now it was different. Now, seeing him was seeing Missandei in chains and hearing Grey Worm cry. It was the feel of her back hitting packed snow, dead hands clawing over her body and ripping at her hair. The sorrow in Jorah’s eyes as he tried to speak through the blood in his mouth. The sight of her children falling from the sky.---A quick look into Dany's mind while King's Landing burns
Relationships: Jon Snow/Daenerys Targaryen
Comments: 20
Kudos: 16





	Strangled by Your Memory

**Author's Note:**

> Ok so I've had this mostly done since about a week after GOT ended, but I never finished or it actually thought about posting it. But now, I'm in a better part of my life where writing feels less like torture and more like something I love again, so yay!!! You can (hopefully) be expecting me to start posting a lot of stuff soon. I have a ton of half finished pieces that I never thought I'd share hidden away in my google drive, but now I want to show it to other people and see what they think!  
> This is my first Dany piece, and I honestly don't know how I feel :/// I have loved Dany with all my heart for years, and I will never not be mad about how the show ended. this isn't meant as a justification for her actions or her shitty plot line in the last season, but I just wanted to kind of get into her head for a bit, cause D&D let her say v little in the last season so...  
> I'm also pissed of how other characters turned out and were changed. Jon, Sansa, Arya, Tyrion, Jaime, Gendry, Cersei, and others were all mutilated and I'm still pissed. However, this fic is not about them, so I stuck to the shitty show characterization :p  
> Anyway! I'll stop talking now. I really hope people like this?? If you do, please leave a kudos or a comment and validate my need for attention :)))
> 
> \--Rae

Something burned in her throat, something angry and acidic. It choked her, tightening in her chest until her heart roared in pain and her eyes stung with tears. She yelled and yelled and yelled, screaming into the sky from atop Drogon, unleashing her pain into the sky just as her son spewed his fire over the city. Missandei’s last word echoed in her mind, louder each time until it rang in time with the clanging of those damned bells.  _ Missandei.  _ Daenerys saw the flash of a sword, heard a wet slice, watched a halo of curls fall, fall, fall. She screamed again.

A phantom sweetness coated her tongue until it was all she could taste, over the salt and smoke and ash that swirled all around her. For all that the Spider had boasted to know, his little birds had evidently never told him of the secret lessons Daario and Missandei had taught her; the sun-hot evenings in traveling camps where they had pressed her to smell and taste all the hidden secrets that might harm her, how she must be wary of an enemy’s ‘hospitality’. The single sip she had taken hadn’t harmed her, not when she’d spat the wine back out the second she could taste the barely there chalky-honey flavor in it. She’d rinsed her mouth out with the closest water she could find, eating nothing that came from that strange little kitchen girl with sad eyes and only drinking what came directly from Grey Worm’s cups. Still, there had been a bone deep chill of fear that had raced through her at the realization of how close the eunuch had come to disposing of her, a terror furthermore because she knew he would never stop, and would be willing to go much further than a gentle poison besides. The sweet sleep had been his idea of mercy. She’d watched him burn, felt the comforting heat of Drogon at her back until the Spider was naught but ash, and yet the terror did not abate. Not with Jon’s scorn freezing her to the bone.

Jon. Every thought of him chilled her. Once, thinking of him felt like sitting in the shade of a lemon tree and a young Viserys, before the madness and the hate took him, braiding flowers into dainty crowns on their heads. Like imagining shapes in clouds and laughing in soft grass. Like peace. Like the only home she’d ever known and thought she’d never have again.

But now it was different. Now, seeing him was seeing Missandei in chains and hearing Grey Worm cry. It was the feel of her back hitting packed snow, dead hands clawing over her body and ripping at her hair. The sorrow in Jorah’s eyes as he tried to speak through the blood in his mouth. The sight of her children falling from the sky. 

She’d thought she could trust him, but trust was such an odd thing. She wasn’t sure she truly knew what it was. For as long as she could remember, she’d trusted that everyone she knew would see her for her use to them. Viserys, Illyrio, even Jorah; they wanted what they could get from her and she’d known it. She had only learned true trust, that faith in others that had always eluded her, after she’d met Missandei and Grey Worm, when the slaves of Yunkai had embraced her and cried with her. She’d thought she could trust him. What a fool she had been.

It was so easy to see how fiercely Jon loved his family. A lifetime of being the unwanted one, of being treated with indignity and disrespect, and yet he still opened his arms and his heart to his siblings. His absolute devotion to them had made her so envious, when they’d first met. She’d wanted that her entire life, would have done nearly anything for Viserys to have spoken of her the way Jon spoke of Arya. Once, on the boat, Jon had told her story after story about the wild little girl who felt everything with all her heart. Arya always loved the stories of the conquest, he’d said, but she always wanted to hear about Visenya, the fierce warrior-queen, more than anything else.

Of course, Daenerys had been thrilled. She’d thought of all the things that perhaps Arya would like. She’d wanted so badly to show Jon, her love, her heart, that if his family was important to him, then they were important to her, too. 

So she had begun to prepare. There was an old tome, gifted to her by some wealthy Braavosi merchants on a visit to Meereen, that documented the histories of several infamous woman warriors. Daenerys had intended to gift the book to Arya on her first night in Winterfell, but the younger girl had been nowhere to be found. It continued on like that, with Arya either simply being somewhere else or just barely within her sight. She’d also hoped to introduce Arya to her children; Drogon wouldn’t care much for some tiny human that smelled of fur and leather and cold and probably would have ignored her at the very least-and snapped at her at worst-but Rhaegal had always been a little more comfortable around people who weren’t Daenerys. He didn’t  _ like _ them, exactly, but he was much less likely to light them aflame. 

In the end, Daenerys couldn’t even say she’d had as much as a conversation with Arya, but she knew with alarming certainty that the girl had a foul opinion of her. But how could Arya be so sure of her character without ever having truly spoken to her?

But then, there was Sansa. Jon hadn’t had as much to say of her, but his love was still clearly there. Daenerys learned that they weren’t close as children, with Sansa shunning him as she had, but that there was a new bond between them now. One forged in strife and grief and the mutual understanding of the horrors they’d both faced. He hadn’t told her the tortures Sansa had faced, too honorable to betray his sister’s trust like that. But it was all too easy to guess. 

Daenerys, perhaps naively, thought that shaming similar tragedies might make them friends. They were both women who had survived being victims and assuming power over their own lives. Surely, they’d at the very least have an understanding of each other.

Instead, she had arrived in Winterfell and met a woman who could not more clearly  _ hate  _ her. From the very beginning, Lady Sansa’s icy greeting had quite clearly conveyed her message;  _ you and yours are not welcome here.  _ Daenerys had tried to bridge the divide, tried to reach across the chasm between them, but Sansa had some snide, conniving comment waiting at every turn. Nothing she’d said was ever out of line-no, Sansa was too clever for that, but she knew exactly what to say and when to say it to sow as much discord as possible. 

Sansa’s constant contempt hurt Daenerys more than she’d ever imagined. She’d been excited to meet Arya, of course, but she’d secretly held out hope for the kinship of a woman who understood. A woman-for no man could ever truly empathize-who understood what it was like to be surrounded by enemies and fight her way out until she could carve a space for herself in the world. 

Daenerys could see the Red Keep. It loomed ahead of her, tall and bright, even covered in ash. Something in her twisted, and she felt she could almost see Cersei Lannister’s face staring at her from a window, wearing that terrible, smug smirk. The castle was too far, she consoled herself as the air churned around her. No one would be able to see someone in the castle from this distance. Besides, that cowardly bitch is probably hidden away in the bowels of the keep, trying to escape. But still she saw that face, even when she closed her eyes. Daenerys breathed in, and saw Missandei again. Saw the way her dearest friend had straightened her back and raised her chin even as the sword sank into her neck. 

Daenerys screamed again, Drogon echoing her pain with his own screech.

Drogon. Her darling, fierce child who was freedom incarnate. His suffering, his grief bellowed in the furor of his flame. His neck stretched, thrashing from side to side as he spewed fire over the cursed city. His movements were frantic, wings beating too fast, too hard, his whole whole body tensing and bunching with each motion. Daenerys sobbed, feeling his body shudder under her as if he was being torn apart. She could feel his heart scream, the empty hollow in his soul where his siblings had been aching like an open room. She felt it too, another loss that left a hole in her. She was riddled with these holes, and sometimes she wondered if there was anything left of her.

Three children, gone. Three babies she would never be able to put to rest. It ached, knowing she’d never be able to burn their bodies, never be able to inter their ashes and give them peace. Daenerys had never even held Rhaego, and Jorah had buried her sweet boy. She knew he’d done what he’d thought right, laying her son to rest in the way he would have if Rhaego had been his own blood, but her heart had fought against the wrongness of it. They were Targaryens, and they weren’t meant to be put in the ground to rot with the dirt. They should be returned to the fire after their death, burned away until they were free. Rhaego was still there, somewhere in the Dothraki sea. He should have been burned with his father.

Rhaegal lay somewhere in the bottom of the ocean, shot down like some common bird. She couldn’t think of him, not without hearing his scream as he fell. Not without seeing the blood pour like a fountain, staining the waves crimson below him, marking them as his grave. There was no way to get his body back; she didn’t even know where it actually was now.

Rhaegal wouldn’t have died if Jon had been on his back. She screamed again.

And Viserion. Gods, Viserion, her clever, fickle boy. He’d never been as quick to fight as his siblings, not quite as fierce in combat. When they were small, he’d learned quickly he would never win a fight against his brothers. It hadn’t taken him long to figure out that sometimes, if he could just trick them, he had a chance at coming out on top. Now, he was some half rotted, half crumbling relic by the gates of Winterfell. Seeing him like that, hearing Jon describe how her child had just fallen apart at the Night King’s death, had been a pain she’d never known before. She tried to burn what remained of him with the others who had died that night, but it hadn’t worked. The fire which had once birthed him shunned his tainted body in death.

Viserion would be alive too, Daenerys thought, if not for Jon.

She spurred Drogon forward, faster, fiercer. They were right over the castle now. The bells tolled, and Daenerys echoed Missandei’s voice with her own, screaming  _ dracarys  _ at the stones. Black tinged flame enveloped the tallest tower, and she watched with a fanatic glee as it appeared to melt, molten stone dripping further and further down, great chunks of the turret falling to the lower walls in a concussive symphony.

Really, though, everything led back to Jon. Jon Snow, a man who she’d thought might love her as devotedly as he loved his family. A man that she could return that love to. A man who spoke truth with every breath, a man who was not merely trying to use her, a man who she might trust, a man who she could spend the rest of her days with, a man who would paint doors red and plant lemon trees with her. A man who would not  _ betray her and endanger her and put her very life at risk.  _

Viserion was dead because of him. Jorah was dead because of him. Half her dothraki, her bloodriders, who his northerners had sneered at like their lives hadn’t been saved by those they called savages, were dead because of him. So many Unsullied, the men who fought and died for her, the men she cherished like children, the first men she’d seen free, were dead because of him. Rhaegal was dead because of him. Missandei was dead because of him. 

Cersei Lannister was alive because of him. 

It was his fault. It was  _ all  _ his fault. Ever since she had arrived in Westeros, every misfortune to befall her and her people- _ he  _ was the common thread! It was  _ his fault!  _

_ Viserion Jorah the Dothraki the Unsullied Rhaegal Missandei Viserion Jorah the Dothraki the Unsullied Rhaegal Missandei Viserion Jorah the Dothraki the Unsullied Rhaegal Missandei Viserion Jorah the Dothraki the Unsullied Rhaegal Missandei _

There were giant holes in the castle, great, gaping holes with stone crumbled and burned away. So many holes, Daenerys thought. Good. Now they know what it feels like. Now they know what is to be blasted to pieces and whittled away until there’s nothing left of you but a skeleton. 

She breathed in the smoke, feeling the ash settle on her skin and in her mouth. The sooty taste covered her tongue, and she laughed with the relief of it. No more phantom sweetness, the taste of her own death gone, replaced with the burnt remains of a damned city. For the first time in days, her heart slowed from its frenetic pace.

The bells rang. Missandei’s face flashed before her, eyes suddenly blank and mouth slack as the blade swung through her throat. Another toll, and there was Jorah, falling to his knees, blood bubbling from his mouth. Then Viserion, mottled and ripped apart, fighting his brothers with dead eyes that aren’t his own. Rhaegal falls from the sky, screaming for his mother, for his brothers, beating his wings in a desperate attempt to get away. The light of a thousand flaming swords blink out as her people ride to their deaths.

_ Viserion Jorah the Dothraki the Unsullied Rhaegal Missandei Viserion Jorah the Dothraki the Unsullied Rhaegal Missandei Viserion Jorah the Dothraki the Unsullied Rhaegal Missandei Viserion Jorah the Dothraki the Unsullied Rhaegal Missandei _

The sweetness is back, stronger than before, and now it stings in her throat. She has to scream, has to get it out, has to burn it away. She has to.

“ _ Dracarys!”  _ Daenerys screams, and the word sears the sweetness out of her.

“ _ Dracarys!”  _ She screams, and Missandei smiles.

_ “Dracarys! Dracarys! Dracarys!” _

  
  



End file.
